Woman on the Run - Part 1

~by Taylor

September 1 is my eleventh birthday. My what, you ask? I know there are various individuals out there who believe I really don't pass for much more than 12 (although I am 27), but even they agree that eleven is a bit young to start a company and run the world.

Actually, it's just the right age.

Game on.

(A Portrait of a Runner as She Hits The Road ~ Running The World Europe, 2009)

On September 1, 1999, I was sixteen. I kissed my parents and sister good-bye and boarded a plane to France. I was to spend the next ten months on the other side of the Atlantic working hard to learn the language, trying my best to actively integrate with the culture, and ensuring I ate the cheese following the meal (not hard). But on that late summer day eleven years ago, standing outside of the gate in those last moments before I left, "active" was not the word to describe my mindset. Terror, was much more like it. Paralysis. Extreme consciousness that once I turned around and took a step I'd be setting off on a very different life. And I couldn't turn back. Once I took that step, I knew I'd never be the same.

It was my birthday. Not just the beginning of a new life, but a new approach to life and style of living that has been a part of me ever since. Once I took that step, I'd be a different person than who I'd been.

Would I never be the same? That was an understatement. During that year I quickly discovered my impulsion to travel, my drive to discover, and the beautiful unknown impetus that drove - and drives- me to write. But it took me many years to realize that my addiction is to something simpler, and deeper. It was that step, that first step, that pirouette to turn around and go. And the sensation that came with it - that deep rush of fear and energy and palpable life.

That moment before you leave on a trip - not just any trip, but an epic trip - you physically stand at a junction of space and time that converges on your concentrated location. There among your family and friends your past and your present surround you. But when your flight is called, you take that step and turn around. In one step the past and the present melt behind you, and the future opens up in front of you. A gaping time warp beaming sunlight, and you walk right in.

I am a part of all that I have met / Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades / Forever and forever when I move

September 1 is my birthday. I remember leaving for France at only 16, and thinking I'd never have another experience like it that that was the peak of incredible travel. How wrong I was. Each time I predict an end to my adventures they only get crazier.

And this year, on September 6, Kate and I will board a plane and begin an adventure more concentrated, more intense, more unforgettable, and more epic than any, in my life, that has come before. Stay tuned :o).